CIA dealt with dictators to prepare Bay of Pigs

Thursday

Sep 1, 2011 at 12:01 AMSep 1, 2011 at 10:08 AM

MIAMI - A once-secret CIA history of the Bay of Pigs invasion lays out how the U.S. spy agency came to the rescue of and cut deals with authoritarian governments in Central America, largely to hide the U.S. role in organizing and controlling the hapless Cuban-exile invasion force.

MIAMI — A once-secret CIA history of the Bay of Pigs invasion lays out how the U.S. spy agency came to the rescue of and cut deals with authoritarian governments in Central America, largely to hide the U.S. role in organizing and controlling the hapless Cuban-exile invasion force.

The report provides important evidence of the truth of the adage that the most-powerful people in Central American embassies were the CIA station chiefs.

A newly released part of the CIA’s Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation says ambassadors stepped aside and allowed the CIA to negotiate deals for covert paramilitary bases, CIA pilots and Cuban foot soldiers. They then helped suppress a coup attempt by the Guatemalan army that threatened their foothold in the country.

Nicaraguan Gen. Anastasio Somoza hit up the CIA for a $10?million payoff — development loans — as the price for letting the Americans launch the Cuban-exile invasion from his country.

“What you’re reading

in this report shows again that in the hypocritical

name of democracy, the United States and CIA were willing to prop up some of the most cut-throat dictatorships,” said researcher Peter Kornbluh of George Washington University’s National Security Archive. He sued the CIA for release of the top-secret document that dissects one of the agency’s greatest failures.

Using secret interviews, cables and memos, CIA historian Jack B. Pfeiffer wrote the classified account of the disastrous operation to topple Fidel Castro. It is unusually candid because nobody except spies were expected read it.

Both the Eisenhower and Kennedy governments wanted to be able to deny responsibility for the invasion, so the bulk of the paramilitary training took place in Guatemala. Nicaragua later provided the runway and launch site for the air-and-sea operation.

Leaders of both countries are shown in the documents refusing to take the heat for the Bay of Pigs at a time when the United States pointedly picked them in order to argue “plausible deniability” regarding the invasion of a country. Nicaraguan President Luis Somoza wanted a promise that, once the exile endeavor was exposed, the U.S. government would protect him from the wrath of the Organization of American States and United Nations for helping Cuban exiles prepare the April 1961 invasion.

But the most-dramatic episode is laid out in a 1960 coup attempt in Guatemala. It threatened America’s special relationship with Guatemalan President Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes and imperiled training of the Cuban-exile force on a farm belonging to Ydigoras Fuentes’ confidant Roberto Alejo.

The Guatemalan president is described as having spread lies about a Cuban warship off his country’s coast — there was none, wrote Pfeiffer — and as a byproduct, his claim helped in recruitment of exiles in August 1960.

Then on Nov. 13, 1960, a large group of dissident Guatemalan army officers led an uprising against the presidency.

The president, for his part, blamed Cuban communists and appealed to the CIA for help. Pfeiffer called it a convenient lie.

“The charge that the revolt was Castro-backed would be repeated throughout the period,” Pfeiffer wrote. “But no evidence was ever found to indicate that it was anything other than an internal uprising of dissident Guatemalans, principally elements of the Army.”

Cuban foot soldiers, believing that Cuban communists were behind the

rebellion, volunteered by

the hundreds to defend Ydigoras Fuentes.

American pilot C.W. Seigrist reported that he and another CIA pilot flew sorties aboard B-26 Invader planes, each with Cuban pilot-

observers in the cockpit.

Seigrist said he and the Cuban fighters were all volunteers. “We felt that what we were working for would all go down the tubes if the revolt was successful and we were exposed,” he said in the official history.

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